I am set to take the RHCT (Red Hat Cert Tech) cert this summer and the RHCE (Engineer) at the end of the year. Have not noticed anyone on this site with either of those or any Red Hat mentioned. I will not be working on Hacking just yet, am getting my BS in InfoSec. I might one day advance to hacking and such.

Just trying to get some feedback on what everyone thinks about these certs.

I have LPI's LPIC-1 and Novell's CLA, CLP and CLE for SuSE Linux, and I know they did a good job with theirs. From others I've spoken to, RedHat's RHCE was a good experience, but I've not talked to anyone, yet, who described the RHCT in any detail.

~ hayabusa ~

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'

It is my understanding that the Redhat certs are the premier Linux certifications and are very high quality. I have only barely looked into Linux+ myself just to round out some of my UNIX/LINUX knowledge, but not too seriously.

So has anyone found it to be DIRECTLY helpful in either getting a job or on the job. My instructor said that if I were to get RHCE that the only choices I would have to make is where to work and figure out what color Porsche I want. I am not truly relying on this cert alone. Just trying to figure out how much weight it actually carries.

impelse is on the money, here. As with any certification, the pay is always commensurate on the proven experience. You MIGHT get lucky and land something high-paying, simply by showing the cert, but if you start working, and can't perform as expected, you're likely to either be let go again, or have that Porsche and high salary taken away from you, or lowered. I think for any instructor to make that type of comment, they are biased towards what they're teaching, without first understanding YOUR capabilities and retention skills.

Additionally, a RH person, who knows RH, is always more likely to propose the value of RH, versus another distro. Same for a SuSE person, or an Ubuntu person, etc. It's all in the flavor you're accustomed to using. Mind you, RH has the larger market share for the moment (but it is beginning to wane a bit to other distros,) but ultimately, if you have ANY Linux cert, and can show you understand it as well as some RHCE who has his cert 'on paper only' (meaning he passed a test, but doesn't retain the knowledge well, afterwards,) then you could still land that high paying job, and get your Porsche!

That said, I'd also agree with KamiCrazy's comments, that while RHCT, in his case, might not be something he uses, day in and day out, he noted the benefit it gave him, in using tools and distros, such as using BackTrack for his OSCP, and that fundamental, underlying Linux knowledge goes a long way to helping you do other things.

My full-time employer stresses Linux, and went as far as switching 80% or more of our folks to Linux, in a single year. While there are still Windows folks in the mix, where they need to exist and use proprietary software and tools, it was amazing how fast certs like LPI's LPIC-1 came into play, in helping ourselves and our coworkers with day-to-day work. The ONLY primary difference you'll find between distro's is some minor changes in the filesystem locations for things, etc, but ultimately, if you understand the OS, itself, those differences are easy to overcome and work through.

Good luck, and let us know how you do with your RH certs!

~ hayabusa ~

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved." - Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'

That is a shame Vedder $800 is a lot to throw down for a cert. I am hoping to place high enough in my class to get a free voucher for the RHCT cert. Well I have no XP but my scripting teacher tells me I show great talent for troubleshooting as well. I am expecting to do a internship with Cisco over the summer. We will see how everything works out.

Ash Chole wrote:My instructor said that if I were to get RHCE that the only choices I would have to make is where to work and figure out what color Porsche I want.

That comment about the Porsche cracked me up

This site has some interesting trend info for certifications and salary associated with those certifications. It's interesting to see the trends associated with a specific certification: http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/rhce.doThe average salary is worth noting.

Personally, I believe that the demand for Linux skills will increase in the future as more companies are looking to decrease costs and Linux is gaining more popularity especially amongst large financial companies. So having a RHCE certificate should come in real handy.